Why is it OK to say "I'm rubbish at maths" when...

[Clary]

you would never freely admit to being rubbish at English?

A colleague said this to me today and manyothers have said it before when they ask me to explain how to work out percentages or whatever.

Why is it a badge of pride to say this? I work in an office where people deal with the written word and facts and figures all day. If they couldn't read they would really struggle - but apparently it's OK not to be able to do maths.

If they are really that bad, why don't they do an evening class?

Message withdrawn

I converted 40 centigrade to farenheit today in a casual conversation with work colleagues. Everything went quiet and when asked I explained how I did it. I was met with alot of blank faces with looks which could only have been thinking i was some sort of alien. I'm keeping my mouth shut next time.
you're right noone would have even admitted to not understanding a long word in the conversation.

I was at a presentation on research funding the other week where the woman giving the talk kept getting millions and billions muddled up; I don't think anyone else was noticed, or was bothered!

noticed or was bothered

the thing with teaching maths is constant checking of understanding. and not just asking - because invariably people who don't understand something will claim they do because they think they should and don't want to appear stupid.

If you don't stop at the first part of not understanding with maths, and go back and rethink it so that it is understood, then you just build confusion on confusion and it all goes wrong.

If you can get the idea that it is not the maths that is difficult - just the way it was explained - then you are on the right track. you have to have the confidence to say - no stop - I don't get that bit, tell me again in different words. That is the strategy I am trying to instill in my DS - both for his own self confidence and so that he has the tools to take control of the situation for himself.

by the way - am I the only one who can't do mental arithmetic since having kids ? I used to be able to do it - now my brain just sort says - your on your own kid - I'm not playing with this one.

I sort of freeze mentally now. Give me a pen and paper and I can do it - take them away and I lose all ability to even think how it should be done !

I think one thing that's really interesting is the issue of the connection between maths and language. I'm no maths genius but I'm numerate and I really believe in using (interchangeable) language to explain maths - and real life tools - because basic maths is all about language and real life - and if you parcel it off into something that is "other" you're on a losing streak imo. I taught dds adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing without using any of those words - but using lots of different words. "if I've got 4 piles of 3 buttons how may have I got altogether?" one of my favourite tools was a Richard Scary book - just packed with things to count, add up, multiply - a picture of a skyscraper with 20 floors and 5 windows on each - endless maths and sums on that one. and they didn't even know they were doing "maths". same with percentages. if you use language well you can explain percentages to a 4 year old. I feel very cross when people mystify basic maths.

I think the difference is that many people see Mathematics as an isolated academic subject, whereas they see English as everyday life.

However, I can confidently say that English was my weakest subject at school. I think I can communicate well and have a good vocabulary. I have never struggled with spelling. But I really lacked confidence in my English lessons at school. I could never write an imaginative story - all my essays were based on personal experience. I could never get the drift in poems - they always had to be explained. Ditto literature. I was a very late developer in interpretation. I did get A grades in my O and Higher examinations, but I lacked confidence throughout. I had the ignominy to be put into set 2 .

My level of English serves me well in everyday life, but the artistic side escapes me. This means I could safely declare myself to be rubbish at English - the academic subject, but not necessarily as a command of my mother tongue.

I invigilated quite a few English exams this summer and looking at the papers, I was thankful that it was them and not me doing them.

You're right about basic maths being expressible in language, hatwoman. But, fortunately for dyslexics you don't have to think in words if your brain doesn't tick that way.

I know a guy who can barely string words together - he had a heck of a job writing his PhD thesis - but is a total genius at writing scientific algorithms. He doesn't think in words, it just comes straight out from his brain through his fingertips into code.

He is fantastically creative, in his field. Nearly got written off as terminally thick at school though.

that's interesting grimme - and I wonder if it's particularly relevant when you move beyond a certain level. dh has a PhD in robotics (which is a form of engineering but obv. requires a high level of maths)whereas I have an A at o level but them went on to fail a/o level. At one level this was in part down to thinking I had better things to do with my life aged 16 - but it also seemed, to me, that maths, at that point, took a quantum leap. I could no longer rely on language and logic - it seemed to have moved into a whole other sphere. dh denies this - he says that yes it gets hard, but there isn't such a leap. When I hear him talk about maths to dds, I wonder if it's because he does think in numbers. Interestingly (and dh might disagree) I think that upto a point, I'm better at explaining maths to dds than he is. I think I add in steps/translate stuff that he doesn't see the need to. ie because I'm not as good I use language to simplify it - when he might not even see the need to.

a related point - is that over the years, talking to dh about maths, engineering, and other scientific stuff, I long ago put aside my stupid ideas that all this stuff wasn't creative, and didn't have aesthetic value. I don't quite "get" the truly complex stuff, well, of course I don't, but I do get glimpses of beauty in it. More Donne than Wordsworth but perhaps that makes it even more beautiful. and dh is one of the most creative people I know - creative in how he thinks.

It makes me very cross to see people denigrate science and maths - when they clearly know nothing about it at all...

Interesting about language and numbers. People can also see number relations pictorially - through shapes including 3-D shapes. Thats how it is for me. I've just submitted a PhD in something very mathsy, and I think my personal strength is in translating conceptual problems in words into numbers and vice versa.

Like some other pps though, I went totally off maths after o level. Calculus just didn't click with me - I could just about do it but the shock put me off maths for many years. All kinds of maths are not equivalent and it seems some kinds of maths suit some people more than others.

Bloss says: 'I've definitely had that when the maths gets to my limit! I've got it... I've got it... I've got it...[pause] Nope. It's gone.'

I totally get that. I think almost everyone surely experiences this - they just reach that point at different levels. I've finally realised that when I feel like that I should push through it - because that is when the really interesting stuff happens. I recommend it!

Very interested in this thread - dad is Professor of Mathematical thinking and we yabber on for ages about how it all works. I have a masters in learning difficulties - particularly in dyslexia and in short term memory difficulties and how they impact on mathematical thinking.

However, I now have to do the school run!

Come back bramblebooks - you can't leave us hanging like that!

Right, I have coffee now. I work with children with dyslexia, adhd, etc in a mainstream school and am very interested in finding ways around speech and language processing problems which impact on learning - particularly in maths. A child may not have a speech impediment, but the wiring is often a little or a lot different from the way others think.

I'm a very visual learner and think in 4D about things - ie, 3D plus time! I need a visual reinforcement when complex things are being described to me orally and it helps me to understand how children with social and communication difficulties or those on spectrum think - they also need visual reinforcement.

Learning styles is something which we are all so much more aware of in education now.

Acinonyx, dad's working on his latest book which is going to be called something like 'how humans learn to think mathematically'. He lectures worldwide on the subject.

He has also written quite a few books on

Calculus.

Hope that word hasn't caused too many flashbacks! (wonder if you've referenced his work, or the work of his colleagues such as Stewart and Skemp?!)

Acinonyx... do download a pdf of Cognitive Units, Connections and Compression
in Mathematical Thinking, it's really good reading. I'm really not being daft here guys!

i am rubbish at maths.

i am required to do statistical calculations occasionally for my role.

for instance next weeks i will be doing a shit load of percentages.

and it doesn't matter - that dh has showed me 100000000000 times. i will still be ringing him to have him talk me through the formula veeeeeeeeery slowwwwwwwwwly.

then i can do it

now - if you want to stick in fractions into the pot - on the same say within the same piece of work - i would be fubared.

i can only remember one thing at a time

i don't know why

i am not a brain surgeon either

i don't know why i am wired this way

i don't know why my brain - or me - or both - won't or can't remember how to do percentages beyond next week - i don't know why.

if i could do a maths exam - that allowed me to do

graphs on day one

fractions day two

percentages day three

algebra day 4 - i could pass

but even then - with a certificate

i would not remember any of them by the week after

i can't do any thing about it - i have tried

3 times maths gcse and one NVQ - failed.

i have a degree in English though - go figure!

Oh - the 'c' word, I feel hives coming on.

Must take a look at that link - looks like a great way to further procrastinate and get no work done this afternoon.

OK got one. 33 pages. That will keep me busy for a while. Actually it is relevant to a trait I study - systemizing - which is associated with mathematical skill.

I am good at maths but could see first hand what happened to people who weren't.

For example, when we did algebra in years 11 and 12, those of us with mathematical minds 'got it' and progressed happily through the next few years. Those who struggled more, never 'got it' and found the next few years a mystery. And, I'm talking about people in the top set (of 10!) who went on to get mostly As at GCSE.

I think that it's a tragic shame and can only think that maths could be taught in a different way to the 80% of the population who panic when xs and ys are thrown into the equation. (sorry for the pun).

Possibly, it's best not to launch into the conventional stuff until people get the concept.

Who knows!

Sorry, just read the threads.

Hatwoman and brambly-hedge are very interesting in what they have to say.

Try thinking in simple terms...a four year old can tell you how many sweets they have if they had four and their little brother stole two of them. However, they would struggle with putting it formally on paper with plus and minus signs.

Most maths is only about trying to explain everyday things using formal language and I think that is where people struggle.

Children are taught fractions and percentages in year 6, so adults should really try and learn to do them too!

However, a lot of maths isn't about arithmetic...it's about shapes, graphs, statistics. So, if you struggle with algebra you might find something else easier.

The demand for maths teachers is intense and other subject specialists often get roped in (I did).

It's especially probelmatic, I think, at junior school level where it is not uncommon for the sharper kids to way outstrip the teacher wrt math skills. I clearly recall being in a special set for maths at junior school and the teacher (the headmaster no less) being totally unable to field any questions from the class. He wrote it, you copied - that was it.

A quote from dad's work for hatwoman:

'An example
of this was expressed beautifully by a Polish mathematics educator who, when asked
what ?twelve? meant to him, replied that it is ?a cloud of facts that cluster around like
butterflies.? For him twelve was not a single symbol but a cluster of relationships,
?twelve is six and six, it?s four threes, it?s fourteen minus two, and so on.? He went on to
explain that, for him, arithmetic is not just computation, it is a choosing from the cloud
of facts at his disposal.'

Hey I just read that in that paper - so I know he's one of two people.....

• that's brilliant - 12 as a cluster of relationships. that's put a huge smile on my face.

I was fine with maths (top set, A at GCSE a year early) despite no tuition all through secondary school (teacher said 'do the exercises in the book'). It all seemed logical and obvious.

Then I started A-level... and it stopped being logical and you needed both intuition and a better grounding than I had. Got a U.

Ironically I'm still really good at mental arithmetic having had that taught really well at primary school, whereas friends with maths degrees certainly could never calculate a percentage like VAT in their heads!

I'd like to see some kind of 'numbers in real life' qualification becoming more vital - eg what questions to ask if you see a graph showing some steep line that's advertised as impressive.

OP

English isn't a subject, is it?

I mean, if a child never went to school he or she would still be able to speak English (assuming he or she grew up in an English-speaking community) whereas he or she would not necessarily have any concept of maths beyond, perhaps, counting (though this would, of course, be influenced a bit by society - the demands of a modern society are greater in this respect than in a medieval rural community. But it holds as a basic distinction between the two.)